Using Copyrighted, Creative Commons, and Public Domain Materials Activity: Is It Legal?: Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

Instructions for Your Students

What's Going on Today

The world is your oyster. Except that oysters don't come with instructions. Whether you know it or not (and we bet you do), you're online creating, publishing, and using other people's creative juices to make your own smoothies. If you've ever come across a really cool pic that you wanted to use for a collage or a school report, and didn't know whether using it was legal or not, you are not alone. Today we'll be learning about when and how you can use, share, and modify other people's creative works.

Instructions

When your instructor asks you to go to the websites below, open them in your browser.

Copyright: You can't change or distribute these, not without
permission, or outside of "fair use" (basically as in, for education and
not for sale). Copyright usually lasts for 70 years after the death of
the author or artist of the material.

Creative Commons: You can use
Creative Commons materials as long as you give credit where it's due
(a.k.a. cite the genius mastermind who created it). Sometimes you can
change these goodies, and sometimes even use them to gain a tidy profit
(like if you put a Creative Commons painting on a T-shirt that you
sell).

An example of Creative Commons materials in use: a photo of Tom Brady (Check out the attribution in the caption.)

Public Domain:
Yippppeeeee! Free for all. In other words, these materials are usually
super old or belong to the Man (as in, the government). That means you
can use them without getting anybody's permission, change them as much
as you want, and even sell them to make money.